


give me some love and hold me tight

by millipop



Series: you're my head, you're my heart [2]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: 6x10 spoilers, 6x11 speculation slash wishful thinking, Emotions, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Season/Series 06 Spoilers, Speculation i guess, clarke's emotions in the moments of her revival, conversation i want them to have, they won't but i can dream
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-18
Updated: 2019-07-18
Packaged: 2020-07-07 17:57:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19856533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/millipop/pseuds/millipop
Summary: Clarke breathes him in, holding him tighter to her, shivering with it. The sheer respite of hugging him. It was him. The chest pains. The breath. He restarted her heart, he became her heart.//Clarke's POV of 6x10, and what I wish would happen after. Spoilers, obviously.





	1. this time I know I'm back in my body

**Author's Note:**

> hhhhh how we doing friends? 6x09 made me emotional enough to write a 13k fic about Clarke's feelings, so obviously I needed to add my take on 6x10 and beyond. I can't believe we've been this blessed. They truly are soulmates...  
> Thank you to ro again, and to Aurora, Maggie Rogers, Florence Welch, and Missy Higgins for your beautiful lyrics

_Go float yourself_

She’d never thought the saying would become so real for her. Not after she landed on Earth.

Of course, it kept being something they all said. A shared language, a shared heritage. It was something uttered in anger, or humour sometimes, but usually people meant it as a synonym. For something spiteful.

Now she was actually floating Josephine’s memories.

Clarke would feel worse, if some of memories hadn’t literally sent shivers down her (virtual) spine. Josephine really was a sociopath. But she still feels awful, watching the blankness grow behind the other girl’s eyes.

She feels sick watching Gabriel and Josephine in their second bodies, dancing. They’d been people. The hosts. This was what she would have been, if the neural mesh hadn’t saved her. Josephine dancing around in her body, with Madi, Bellamy, her mom, having to watch. Monty was right. She couldn’t let that happen.

But as much as Clarke wants to survive, she still feels something when she glances at Josephine beside her. The girl is watching her memory entranced. It feels like murder, to take it away from her. Even if she was a body-snatcher.

The sirens sound once again, however. And Josephine’s memories are walking around, among them. She spots the older Josephine taking a baby from a couple. Her as a child, bullying another kid. It stiffens her resolve, when she realises they have to float it all.

Clarke still tells her though. That they can survive in her cell. Gabriel can save them both. As long as she can stay far away from Josephine in the real world; maybe they can come to some sort of peace. Maybe she can convince them to let their bodies now die naturally.

It all becomes moot when Josephine dissolves in front of her.

She panics, at first. Did floating her memories kill her? Has Clarke done it again? Murdered someone to save her own skin?

But then it’s silent. She doesn’t wake up. There are no sensations anymore, not like when the barriers had been worn down before. Clarke eases open the cell door, and it’s silent. Too silent.

The wreath hangs on the door to Josephine’s mindspace.

Fuck. Fuck!

If she listens hard, she can still hear it. The heartbeat. She’s still alive, but so is Josephine. And the girl who stole her body is back in control.

*

She’s not sure when she loses hope. Time doesn’t pass like it should, in the mindspace. She’s not sure if she’s been alone for half an hour or two days. Probably not the latter though. Their minds may be separate again, but the fact that she’s still here means their brain can’t have long.

But it’s a long time, that she’s there, waiting. Alone. She hopes, pleads, begs, that Bellamy got out of the caves safely. That Gabriel and Octavia have found her. That they’re not on their way back to Sanctum, to squeeze Clarke out of her own body like pus in an infected cut.

Clarke wanders the halls, and all the little doors have disappeared. The paths to her memories, the windows to her past. It’s just her and the ship.

She’s circled back around for the thirteenth time when it happens.

Josephine’s door.

It cracks, light burning through so bright it nearly blinds her. It’s melting, Clarke realises. The door is disappearing. Hope, glorious hope, restarts a breath she didn’t realise she was holding. They saved her. They’re removing the chip. She’s going to wake up.

And then it’s gone. The steel wall stares back at her, mocking. What did you expect, it says. You really thought this was victory?

‘Wait. Why am I still here?’ Clarke doesn’t have much longer to wonder.

‘Because I’m still here,’ says Josephine, and when she spins, the axe catches her in her throat.

It hurts. But not in the way she thinks it’s supposed to. It’s like there’s a thousand bees stinging her neck, but it’s also numbing, like pins and needles turned up a thousand percent. She clutches at her throat, looks up at the face of her murderer.

That’s when she loses hope.

In the split second, between the axe slicing into her form, and falling to her knees, she realises she can’t hear it. The sound her father had told her to listen for when she first woke up here. The steady rhythm has stopped.

Her heart.

And she’s never been an expert, but she has medical training. If her heart has stopped beating, she’s not breathing.

_You still have hope?_

_We still breathing?_

‘Sanctum is mine,’ explains Josephine, when Clarke stares at her, lost. Clutching her throat. Dying. She was so close. Bellamy had nearly fulfilled his promise. But somehow this _bitch_ won’t let her fucking live.

‘I used the surgical mesh,’ Josephine continues, like Clarke cares how’s she still here. What does it matter, at this point. She won. Clarke lost. It’s over. She’s dead.

‘I’m _sorry_ ,’ sighs the other woman. ‘About the whole working together thing.’ Yeah. She looks sorry. Clarke’s a fucking idiot. She should never have felt pity for her. ‘But I know you, Clarke. If you came back, you’d kill everyone inside Sanctum.’

Clarke can’t even respond to that. She’s choking to death. Maybe Josephine was right, and she would have. Maybe this is what she deserves, after the hundreds of lives she’s ended.

‘It’s what you do,’ Josephine says, all condescension. ‘Sorry.’

The last word seems odd, and it takes Clarke a second to figure out why, because she’s a little distracted, with you know. Dying. But it didn’t come from Josephine. Another voice, from outside.

Male. But not Bellamy. If he’s apologising, then that means.

She was right. Clarke Griffin’s last run has ended. And with Josephine staring at her, an almost bored expression on her face, waiting for her to die, she barely has time to think over them. Her memories. Her regrets. She has gone through a lot of them in the past however long she’s been trapped in here. She got to see them again, at least. Wells. Finn. Lexa. Her dad. Monty.

Bellamy.

That’s gonna be a big one, Clarke knows. Regret. Her heart, or lack of it now, she supposes, aches with the knowledge she never got to tell him.

She loves him.

She loves him, and he’ll never know, because she wasted every single chance.

And Madi. God, what would happen to Madi? She hopes Bellamy can get back to Sanctum in time. Josephine has stayed here with her, to die, and that means they’ll never get peace. Clarke prays that Bellamy will look after her daughter. That her mother won’t lash out too harshly. That her friends can forgive her. That they can move on without her.

I’m sorry Mom. I let you down.

I’m sorry Madi. I wasn’t there for you.

I’m sorry Bellamy. I left you behind again.

Clarke wallows, in these last moments, because what else is there to do? Even if she doesn’t die from the virtual slash in her throat, she’s got enough medical knowledge to know that her brain won’t last much longer without her heart pumping blood to it. This is it. Her last moments of brain activity. No breath left, no hope left.

No more Clarke Griffin.

_Thump._

In the corner of her vision, she sees the lights flicker. Her chest aches. Her lips are numb. Her breath feels short, painful.

Wait. Why is her chest aching?

 _Thump._ The listless, empty ship around her powers to life.

_Get up, and fight!_

His voice cuts through everything. It’s desperate. Powerful. Commanding. For a tiny moment, Clarke thinks it’s just the last of her survival mechanism shouting through. Like in the days after Praimfaya, when she’d imagine Bellamy’s response finally crackling through the radio, telling her to get up and keep going and survive.

But then she glances down and sees the axe. Josephine’s never been a fighter. She doesn’t know you don’t let your weapons near someone who’s not quite dead yet. And Bellamy’s plea kicks in, and she listens.

It only takes a second. She picks it up, throws it, with all the strength she has left.

Clarke sees the bare flicker of a shocked expression before Josephine dissolves, exploding into light. It blinds her, and she’s swimming, swimming up through a thick fog. She can’t breathe. She can’t breathe, until something, some _one_ , breathes for her.

The air fills her lungs, she feels lips on her own, and then she chokes.

She chokes, and soft warm hands are cradling her face.

‘Just breathe,’ a voice tells her, and she does.

Clarke turns to look at him, and he’s all she sees. Bellamy. His eyes are red, wet. He’s been crying. But they’re also staring at her like never before. With love. With relief. With hope.

‘Clarke,’ he says, trembling. And it’s like in the cave. A question and an answer at once.

She looks at him, blinks. She wants to kiss him.

But when she reaches forward, it’s better than that, really.

He engulfs her, and Clarke can’t help but let out a whimper. It’s really him. It’s really him, and he didn’t break his promise. Bellamy didn’t let her die.

She holds onto him like if she lets him go, she’ll fall. Maybe she will. Clarke doesn’t want to let him go, ever again. Not when he’s holding her like this, relief and desperation and devotion pouring out of him. Everything in her is pouring what she can back. Gratitude. Happiness. Love.

Clarke breathes him in, holding him tighter to her, shivering with it. The sheer respite of hugging him. It was him. The chest pains. The breath. He restarted her heart, he _became_ her heart.

The head and the heart.

She doesn’t realise she says it aloud until her feels him nodding into her neck, confirming it. It’s all she can do not to sob.

But Clarke’s had enough of crying. She’s alive. Bellamy made sure of that. And she doesn’t intend to waste this chance.


	2. and we can only see each other, we'll breathe together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bellamy and Clarke have a conversation after he saves her. They catch up on what they've missed, and find comfort in each other's touch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter 2. Purely speculative. I don't usually like writing chapters like this, because it'll get canon-balled in like 6 days. But I know they'll never have an actual conversation like this in canon, where they actually catch up with each other and you know. Talk. So enjoy this, and have my wishful thinking and suffer with me.

It takes Clarke a long time to move back from him. She doesn’t want to break their embrace, and judging from the way Bellamy’s clinging to her, like a sailor to the last remnants of his ship, he doesn’t want to either.

But Clarke hears movement around her, and there must be other people in here.

She notices Octavia first. She was behind him, Clarke realises, blurry and indistinct to her in the background when she woke up and saw him.

Now she gently extracts herself from Bellamy’s arms, although not fully. He still grips her hand in his, and Clarke’s damned if she’s letting it go. She blinks, trying to get her vision clearer to focus on Octavia.

Younger, Clarke registers at first. Brighter. Having just faced off with a woman with murder in her eyes, Clarke’s surprised to see the lack of it in Octavia’s. The last time she’d seen Bloodreina in the real world, bloodlust and death had haunted the younger girl’s face.

It’s like it’s been scrubbed from her now, and Octavia smiles tentatively at her, almost _nervous._ It’s bizarre, to say the least. She’s glancing at her brother like she doesn’t know how to look at him. On his part, he’s entirely focused on Clarke. She doesn’t mind that.

‘Welcome back,’ Octavia says, wavering voice clear and full of…relief. It’s a change from the throaty, angry shouts of the Red Queen.

Clarke can barely speak at this point, so she just nods back, hazy. She lets her hands squeeze Bellamy’s, and he pulls his thumbs over the back of her hands in return. Comfort, something she can always count on him for.

It hurts her head to move, but she manages to swing her eyesight around to the other side of the cot she’s laying on. Machines and screens beep and whir. A man stands, with his back to her. Rough brown clothes, short dark hair. He seems to be staring at one of the screens, and Clarke glances at it. Scale 1 and Scale 2. One is alive, data tracing hills and mountains of activity. The one below it is completely flat. Josephine, Clarke realises. This was their neural data.

And this must be…

‘Gabriel.’ Bellamy speaks first, and Clarke shivers in relief at the sound of his voice. He’s really here. Beside her, not willing to physically let her go. She doesn’t think the joy of that will fade any time soon.

‘Yeah,’ says the man, and turns to look at them. His eyes soften, as they meet Clarke’s, but there’s sadness there too. Regret. Pain.

Josephine was the worst, but this man loved her, Clarke knows.

‘Is she gonna be alright now?’ Bellamy asks. Always concerned.

Gabriel nods, jerkily. ‘Her vital signs are improving every second.’ He lets out a small, amused breath. ‘You were right not to give up.’

She feels Bellamy tense, and she squeezes his hands again. He’s not the only one who can provide comfort.

‘Yeah, well,’ Bellamy says, gruff. ‘I promised her. I wouldn’t let her die.’ He looks down at her as he says it, and she knows it’s as much for her as it is a response to Gabriel. She smiles back.

Gabriel shakes his head. ‘You’re a survivor, Clarke Griffin. I’ll give you that.’

‘Damn right she is.’ Octavia’s voice is somewhat hesitant, but still firm. She’s looking at Clarke with a mixture of pride and exasperation. Clarke can relate.

Bellamy clears his throat. ‘Right, well. We need to get back as soon as possible.’

That’s right. Sanctum. Josephine had said her people were in trouble. She moves to sit up properly, but Bellamy lets go of her hand to grip her shoulder.

‘Whoa, whoa. I didn’t mean now. How long is it since you’ve properly slept, Clarke? You or your body?’

Clarke shakes her head. She can’t even remember. ‘I don’t know,’ she says. She looks at Octavia. ‘But if our people are in trouble. If Madi…’

‘We can’t do anything if you’re just gonna collapse on us, Clarke,’ Octavia says. ‘You need to rest. We’ll leave first thing. Besides. Bellamy sent a warning with Jade, one of the guards. Let’s hope it buys us some time.’

Bellamy nods. ‘You’re not going anywhere, Princess.’ The old nickname burns a little, with the surprise of it, but it makes her smile just the same.

‘Fine,’ Clarke sighs. She rolls out her shoulders, and feels the equipment clinging to her. ‘Can I get this stuff off me?’

Gabriel, who seems to have been busying himself in the corner, quickly comes over and helps her take off the monitoring gear. It feels like being free. She doesn’t even care that Bellamy’s still right next to her, steady breathing keeping her calm after her ordeal.

Soon enough, Gabriel excuses himself, one final sweep over Clarke’s form before he exits. She guesses it’s probably pretty hard, to watch the woman you love disappear in front of your eyes. She doesn’t doubt that Josephine got to talk to him, the way he stares at her.

‘Right,’ Octavia says. ‘Maybe some food? I’ll go talk to Gabriel, see if I can find something.’ She too runs her eyes over Clarke, smiling a little. It looks like she wants to say something at the last second, to Bellamy. But she opens her mouth, then closes it, looking chagrined. Instead, she goes to exit.

‘O,’ Bellamy says, surprising Clarke. He’s looking after his sister with a jaw clenched, eyes full of pain. Clarke can tell he’s still angry with her. It’s in the posture, the way his upper lip trembles. But he nods, stiffly. ‘Thanks.’

Octavia gives a tiny smile. Her lips barely upturned. But she nods back. ‘Of course, big brother,’ she says softly, and leaves.

Bellamy lets out a long exhale, closing his eyes.

‘You okay?’ Clarke asks him. He’s clearly not. But. She wants to talk to him.

He turns back around to her, facing her fully. He reaches out a hand, adjusts the strap of her top, which has become twisted. ‘I should be asking you that, Clarke.’ He shakes his head, meeting her gaze. ‘You _died._ Your heart stopped. I had to…’ He lets out a shaky breath.

Clarke bites her lip and claims back his hand. ‘You saved me. I assume it was CPR?’

‘Yeah,’ Bellamy mumbles. ‘Probably not as good as yours but. Hey, it managed to bring you back.’

She smiles. Her chest aches, which means he did a good job. She doesn’t reach for it though. It would only worry him. ‘It was your voice, too,’ she tells him, voice low, and he startles.

‘My voice?’

‘I heard you. Or at least one thing you said.’

Bellamy pauses, flicking his eyes back and forth between hers. ‘What did you hear?’

‘Get up and fight. Along with some thumps which I assume were your compressions.’

He grins slowly, and Clarke loves it, seeing it spread across his face. It lights him up. ‘And did you? Get up and fight?’

‘Yeah,’ she nods, and lets out a small laugh of her own. ‘I thought I’d lost. I knew my heart had stopped, and then Josephine showed up again, even after the chip was gone.’

‘You could tell it was gone?’

Clarke straightens. ‘It’s hard to explain. But yes. But she used the same neural mesh that saved me to keep herself in my brain, and she attacked me. I was dying. I’d given up hope. But then I heard you.’

Bellamy looks shaken, like he’s back to almost losing her. He looks like he’s about to say something, but he closes his mouth at the last second. Clarke waits.

‘The neural mesh. Josephine mentioned it to Gabriel. She said your mind latched onto it. What was it?’

Clarke nods. ‘It was ALIE, actually.’

‘ALIE?’

‘The chip. From when I took it back in Polis. Apparently, it left a mesh that saved my mind from being wiped. Anyone who took the chip and wasn’t EMPed will have it.’

Bellamy looks thoughtful. ‘Wasn’t EMPed?’

‘That was what we got out of Raven. When we saved her. What we got out of my mom.’ She grips his hand. ‘Are they okay, how is everyone back at-’

‘They’re fine. As far as I know,’ Bellamy brings a hand to her back, and rubs it up and down. ‘Last I knew, your mom and Raven had gone up to the ship to uh,’ he looks unsure for a second. ‘They weren’t in Sanctum. Let’s hope they’re still up there.’

Clarke can tell he’s keeping something from her, but she lets it slide for now. ‘You seemed surprised at the EMP. Did Josephine mention it?’

Bellamy clenches his jaw. ‘Mentioned it. She built it.’

She sucks in a breath. ‘She built it?’

He nods. ‘We managed to stop her, took it from her and used it to take down the radiation shield for long enough to drag you through. We were supposed to have Jackson with us, to help get the chip out, but some shit went down.’

‘As usual,’ she comments, and he snorts.

‘As usual.’

Clarke bites her lip. ‘How’d you find out I was still alive?’

He smiles at the question. ‘Well Josephine had a big mouth. And no skills. She had to manipulate Emori into helping her build the EMP, and she told us what they were up to. Little did she know, I already knew.’

Her heart lifts. ‘You did?’

Bellamy smirks, and begins tapping with his finger on her back, where his hand is still resting. It takes her a second, but she’s tapped it out in the mindspace enough to recognise it a couple of beats in.

A-L-I-V-E

She feels tears swell to her eyes. ‘You got my message.’

‘Loud and clear,’ he says, proud. ‘I thought they’d think I was crazy, grief-stricken or something-’

‘Grief-stricken?’

Bellamy looks at her, soft. ‘I thought you were dead. I wasn’t taking it well.’

Clarke suddenly wants to cry, even though she told herself she wouldn’t. She takes a deep breath, steadies herself. ‘But you made a deal.’

He stiffens, frowns. ‘How’d you-’

‘Josephine. She showed me her memory of you. Telling Russell you’d take his deal, because it was what I would have done.’ She can’t help it, her cheeks become wet, and she wipes them quickly with her spare hand. Clarke doesn’t want him to feel guilty over this. She doesn’t blame him.

Bellamy looks ashen, staring at her with wide, horror struck eyes.

‘It’s okay, Bellamy. I’m not mad. You’re right. I probably would have taken that deal too. For all you knew, I was dead.’

‘Clarke,’ he whispers. She shakes her head.

‘It’s alright. Monty convinced me you wouldn’t have-’

‘Monty?’

Clarke winces. ‘Sorry. I forgot. It’s hard to explain. My mind, it became, physical, in a way. A way for it to manifest me, and Josephine, and my memories. And so I met some of them.’ She stares past him, wistfully. ‘Old friends. My dad.’

His hand resumes its comforting journey up and down her back. ‘I interrupted you, sorry. Monty said what?’

She swallows. ‘I think he was my…self-preservation. My final survival instinct kicking in, after I gave up.’

Bellamy freezes yet again. She wishes she could stop alarming him. She’s okay now. She’s here. She rests a hand on his arm, squeezing it. ‘You gave up?’ His voice is hoarse.

Clarke pauses, wondering how to answer. There’s something she wants to know first. ‘How long has it been, since Josephine’s been in my body? Time kind of passed weirdly, in my mind.’

‘About four days. It was naming day, right? When they got you?’ He nudges her, and she finally lets him up to sit on the cot with her. There’s barely enough room, but she doesn’t mind squeezing into him. She’d rather be touching him, than not. ‘Before everything, tell me. How they got you.’

Clarke sighs, worming closer to him. She needs comfort, if she wants to tell this story. ‘It was naming day, yeah. The party. I went home with Cillian, that doctor.’ She feels guilty when he tenses again, but it’s a different kind to his ‘danger-coming’ or ‘alarmed’ tense. This one is uncomfortable. Awkward.

‘It was just a fling. One night. We’d been accepted here, I just wanted to…but it turned out he was a child of Gabriel,’ she shakes her head bitterly. ‘He knew about my blood and was trying to save me. Instead, he ended up getting me killed.’ Bellamy doesn’t say anything, and she knows that means go on. ‘He was going to take me out here, I guess. But to do it, he paralysed me. With some sort of dart.’

Bellamy nods. ‘I’m familiar. Keep going.’

‘But the idiot was found, and instead of letting me go, he slit his own throat to avoid being interrogated. They brought me to Russell and Simone. I was supposed to get the antidote.’

His voice is almost down to a whisper. ‘But instead…’

‘Instead they saw an opportunity.’ Her voice quivers. She’d been so terrified, in those moments, listening to them talk about killing her. Unable to move a muscle, unable to fight back. ‘I was paralysed, and I had the blood. He was very apologetic,’ she says bitterly. ‘But not enough to not murder me. And…’ she lets out a long, drawn breath. ‘I died.’

Bellamy’s gripping onto her leg so hard it almost hurts, but she doesn’t want to move. It feels good to have the physical reminder he’s there and holding on tightly.

‘I woke up when Josephine went to sleep next, whenever that was. And that was when that war began.’

‘You said you gave up?’

Clarke sighs. ‘If I died in my mindspace, that was it. I was gone. But if I managed to kill Josephine, which I did, she would come back again, every single time. So I had to run. Run through my memories and keep her from getting to the most important one.’

‘Important one?’

‘The EMP. The memory of us getting it out of Raven.’

‘She didn’t already know?’ Bellamy sounds pained.

‘No, not at the start. ALIE, or a manifestation of her, warned me. I had to keep it from her, to stop her from knowing how to get rid of me.’

He shakes his head. ‘So how’d she get it?’

‘In the mindspace, there’s an area. The emotional centre. Where all the most painful stuff goes. I hid it there, in a box with a combination. She couldn’t get in.’ Clarke swallows. ‘Until I told her.’

Bellamy clutches her. ‘Clarke. Why’d you tell her?’

‘Because I thought it would be best.’ Bellamy leans forward and looks back at her, like she’s crazy. Clarke looks down at her hands. ‘She was convincing. She showed me the memory, of you taking the deal. She said it would be best for my people. For Madi. For you.’

He’s shaking his head, looking horrified. His eyes are wide, filled with tears. ‘Clarke. Clarke, no. I didn’t know you were alive then. I thought you were dead, gone.’ He puts his head in his hands. ‘I took the deal because I knew you’d want me to protect Madi. Protect our people. It was for the best.’ He looks up, and stares directly at her. ‘But never. Never if you were still alive. If I’d known you were still in there, if I’d known you’d hear me and _give up_ ,’ he trails off, loses his words. Tears slip down into his beard.

Clarke’s crying too, buries her head in his shoulder. ‘You couldn’t have known Bellamy. I wasn’t supposed to be alive. It was luck! Sheer luck. If I had been dead, it would have been the right thing. Bellamy. You have to know that.’

Bellamy gulps, breathing heavily, tears still heavy in his eyes. ‘Russell told me that there was no hope. No bringing you back. That’s what we learned from the lab too. That the host minds were wiped.’

She digests this as he calms himself down. He doesn’t seem to want to let go of her, but he needs to wipe the moisture off. She lets him, watches him carefully. Clarke’s telling him the truth. She doesn’t blame him in the slightest. And he brought her back, fought for her, as soon as he knew.

Clarke presses her lips together. ‘Bellamy,’ she says quietly. ‘When did you find out what happened to me?’

He lets out a sigh, swallowing again, taking his time. Clarke waits patiently. She wants to hear the whole story.

‘Night after the party, after the naming day for Delilah. Priya. Something was off from the start with you. You came down at midday, all weird smirks and odd way of talking.’ He breathes in. ‘I put it down to happiness. I told you – her – it looked good on you. I thought you’d learned to let go a little, let your sins fly free with the lantern.’

Clarke shakes her head. ‘You and I both know it’s not that easy.’

He gives her a pained smile. ‘Of course. But we had no way of knowing…you still looked like you and,’ he looks guilty. ‘The others just thought you’d blown it all off. All the stuff they blame you for.’

She hangs her head for a second, but his hand reaches to her chin, lifts it up. ‘As soon as they found out, they helped Clarke. They just hadn’t been listening to you.’

Clarke nods, accepting it.

Bellamy frowns. ‘Jordan was going crazy though. He had this whole crackpot theory about Delilah turning into a whole different person. He was panicking. We thought he just got dumped.’

‘But he was right.’

‘But he was right. Delilah is Priya now. And Jordan…well, Jordan’s like his parents. He wanted to find out what was really going on. So he broke into their special room thing.’

Clarke has to smile. ‘Like father like son.’

Bellamy nods. ‘Murphy and I noticed he was missing and followed him. We’d only talked to you once, but. Then you turned up too. Josephine had seen us and followed.’

‘She wanted to stop you finding out.’

‘She’d never met Monty. She tried to convince us the place was holy or whatever, and we looked past that. You’d been spending time with Russell and the Primes. You had their royal blood or whatever. I thought you were just trying to fit in. But then Jordan found the lab, and we found a video.’

‘And I…she was with you?’

‘Josephine was, yeah. It was of Gabriel, the original one, performing the first successful mindwipe. And first successful resurrection. Of Josephine.’

Clarke hums. ‘Her first host. A blonde? Waif of a girl, giant eyes?’

‘Yeah,’ Bellamy mutters, looking off into the distance. He looks haunted. ‘We were horrified, obviously. Jordan and me especially. But Murphy. Murphy was intrigued by the immortality. And you.’ He shakes his head. ‘I’ve never looked into your eyes and seen less empathy for human suffering. Even when…’

She just nods, stopping him. She knows what he means.

‘We were scared, obviously. I was scared for you. You had nightblood. You were in danger. But you just dismissed it.’

‘Because it was already too late.’

‘Yeah.’

There’s silence for a few moments. Clarke’s heart is beating wildly, but she’s just glad it’s beating at all. It sounds like it went down just as dramatically as it did in her mind.

‘So then?’

Bellamy nods, firm. ‘So then, Jordan wanted revenge. And you just got weirder and weirder. You kept calling Murphy ‘John’,’ he snorts. Clarke sniggers.

‘Yeah, that would be weird.’

‘Murphy mentioned that your mom had made you a nightblood, and you looked so surprised. That’s when I…that’s when I first thought.’

Clarke swallows. She can’t imagine.

‘Then Jordan caused a scene with Priya, and you slipped out. I followed. You’d had this guard around you all day, supposedly to protect you because of your blood.’ He gives her a side glance. ‘I asked to speak to you alone. In Trig.’

She huffs out a laugh. ‘Of all the things.’ But she looks up at him, grinning. ‘Smart.’

Bellamy ducks his head. ‘She managed to get that drift, but when I had her alone I confronted her, about us being on the same side. She’d obviously heard some stories about us, because she talked about doing better, leaving behind violence, blah blah.’ He waves a hand. ‘That we were murderers, how were we any better, that kind of thing. So I told her something a bit more complicated. In Trig.’

Clarke’s holding her breath. ‘What did you say?’

He runs a hand down her arm. ‘I told her that I might be a murderer. But I see the people I’ve killed in my dreams, not in the mirror.’

She blinks. He’s right. He’s so, goddamn right. ‘And?’

‘You’ve spoken Trig for six years. You were fluent after three months by yourself. It’s a derivative of English,’ he grumbles. ‘It’s not that hard. But it’s foreign at first. And she – you – looked at me like I was speaking Chinese.’

‘Not Chinese,’ Clarke can’t help but say. ‘She knows Mandarin. Maybe Finnish. Swahili.’ She nudges him. ‘Tagalog.’

He doesn’t laugh. He’s staring down at his hands, and then looks up at her. Eyes intense. ‘It was scary. Looking at you in the eyes like that. There was nothing there. None of you.’ Bellamy twists his hands together. ‘In that moment, I knew you were dead, and I had no idea who she was. I shoved her up against a wall. And then she paralysed me. Using one of those darts.’

‘Shit,’ Clarke breathes. ‘The same thing they used on me.’

‘I’d say so.’ He laughs, but it’s mirthless. ‘She introduced herself, then. “Josephine Lightbourne. Nice to meet you.” And then locked me up in her room, so I couldn’t tell anyone else.’

There’s another silence, after that. Clarke doesn’t even know what to say. Even in the worst moments, she’s never fully, entirely believed that Bellamy Blake was dead. She’s thought she’d burnt him alive, sent him to his death in a mountain, stranded him in space with no oxygen, left him behind to die by his sister’s hand. But she’s never been sure. She never saw the light go out behind Bellamy’s eyes, had to watch his heart stop or his breath shudder to a halt.

Not like he has her.

She reclaims his hands, massages a mindless pattern into them. ‘So then what?’

‘When I woke up, I destroyed her room. I was fairly angry,’ he says, ducking his head. Clarke hides a smile. ‘And then Murphy came in. He knew too. It turned out later she’d told him, so he could help her pretend to be you to your Mom. And to convince me to take a deal.’

Clarke stiffens. She’d known Murphy was supremely unhappy with her. But she hadn’t thought. She hadn’t thought he’d betray her like that.

Bellamy starts returning the massaging motion when her hands still. ‘When I found out, I basically beat him up.’ He gives her a wry smile. ‘I don’t think it was all personal. He was after immortality. Because of his death scare,’ he gulps. ‘When I nearly drowned him. Did drown him.’

‘Bellamy. That was the sun. None of us said or did anything we meant.’

He nods back at her. ‘Yeah. Yeah of course. But he was scared of what he saw, and I guess immortality looked good to him. Fucking cockroach.’

Clarke snorts. Yeah. She wasn’t overly surprised.

‘Russell found out I knew. He felt bad, I guess. I think he stopped Josephine from killing me. Instead, she set me free, because she knew how angry I was, and she wanted leverage. I choked him, almost killed him.’

‘Bellamy.’ Clarke murmurs. He’s looking past her again, with wild eyes she hasn’t seen in so long. Six years.

‘But Josephine was looking at me, with _your_ eyes, and I knew it wasn’t what you wanted. Revenge. I think it was partly her manipulating me,’ he admits. ‘Like she did to you, on your side. But I took the deal.’ He hangs his head.

Clarke gathers his face in her hands. ‘If you need forgiveness,’ she says softly.

Bellamy smiles, despite himself. He reaches up a hand and presses her hand into his cheek. ‘It’s okay. That deal got me into the meeting where I saw your message. It worked out okay.’

She nods back, reassuring. And then she summons her courage to ask the question she’s been avoiding. ‘What about my mom and Madi?’

He sighs. ‘Like I said. Your mom went up to the ship. At the time, she didn’t know. Apparently Josephine had told her about a solution to save Kane.’

Clarke swallows. ‘She didn’t notice me…being weird?’

Bellamy glances at her, eyes softening. ‘I don’t know. I wasn’t there. But she’s been distracted, with saving Kane. I’m sure when she finds out…’

She shakes her head. ‘It’s okay. We’ll get back there and tell them. What about Madi? How…’

‘Madi,’ he pauses. ‘When I thought you were…I told her. Personally. I wasn’t going to let her find out any other way.’

Clarke lets a couple of tears slip through. ‘Thank you. Was she..?’

‘She was angry,’ Bellamy admits. ‘But I found out you were alive the next day.’ He sobers. ‘She ran off, though. Before we left. Miller and Jackson were supposed to be looking for her.’

She bites her lip. ‘So we’d better get back there. Soon.’

Bellamy looks relieved. ‘Yeah. Like O said, we’ll leave first thing. Now that we have you back, we can negotiate with them. Find peace.’ He gazes at her, a moment longer than usual. But Clarke doesn’t mind. She doesn’t think she’ll get sick of him looking at like that. Like she’s precious, like he can’t believe she’s there.

They sit in a comfortable silence for a while. Bellamy’s hand resumes its soft trail up her back. She just basks in his warmth. Eventually, he goes to stretch, spring himself off the bed. Clarke catches his arm.

He looks back at her.

‘I need to sleep.’

Bellamy nods slowly. ‘Yeah. We should probably go now. You need a good few hours.’ He smirks. ‘Your heart stopped.’

Clarke doesn’t smile back. She needs to…

She needs to tell him. But she needs to ask him something first.

‘I’m afraid,’ it rushes out. ‘To fall asleep.’

He frowns. ‘Clarke,’ he says. ‘It’s okay. She’s gone. The chip is out, and her brain activity went dead.’

Clarke swallows thickly. ‘I know. But I still think it’ll be hard for me to sleep. See her face in my dreams. Feel like I’m alone again.’

Bellamy stares at her. She knows he knows what she’s really asking. It takes a second, but as she hoped, he melts. ‘Yeah. Yeah, Clarke of course. But come on. I’m sure they have better places to sleep than this cot.’

He holds out his hand.

She takes it.

Gabriel and Octavia are outside, looking suspiciously busy. She guesses her and Bellamy’s conversation was probably longer than it needed to be, but she can’t bring herself to care. They’ve been long overdue for a conversation like that, and she needed it. To know what happened while she was trapped in her own head, and to tell someone, tell Bellamy, what happened to her.

They grab some food after all, and Clarke wolfs it down, relishing the sensation. Every little physical thing is a novelty now. She didn’t get to appreciate it, running from the Children and the Sanctum guards. But now she can brush her own hair back, wiggle her toes, hear her own heartbeat from the proper place.

It’s never felt better to be herself.

Gabriel sets them up a small place to sleep in a corner, provides blankets and pillows with no raised eyebrows at them setting it up together. Clarke knows what they’ve looked like. Even if it hasn’t been like that, she wants it to be. She wishes it was. She doesn’t blame Gabriel for not blinking an eye.

Octavia does raise a brow but doesn’t say anything. She seems to recognise things with her brother need to be taken slowly. She throws Clarke a significant look but resigns herself to her own corner without comment.

Bellamy lies down first, and Clarke hesitates, for a moment. She knows Echo is back at Sanctum, and doing this, well. Clarke loves Bellamy. She should feel guilty. For sleeping with the person she loves, while he’s with someone else.

But she can’t feel bad when he opens an arm, a clear invitation, and she lies down next to him. It’s the most right she’s felt since she was gasping her first breaths in his arms.

His steady breathing soon lulls her into calmness, and she can almost forget about seeing Josephine’s face behind her eyelids, when her mind drifts too emptily. Bellamy radiates warmth, and she snuggles closer without meaning to. He doesn’t stiffen though, just drapes his arm over her.

Clarke feels secure. Safe. Alive.

They lie in silence for a bit. She’s not sure if he’s asleep or not. She can’t see his face, and his breathing is slow and regular.

The courage wells up in her. Now that she’s here. Okay. Because of him.

If he doesn’t acknowledge it, she’ll tell him again. Later. After they save their people. And she can hear his answer.

‘I’m in love with you,’ she whispers. It’s very soft, almost nothing. But if he’s awake, he’d hear it. If not, she’s content that she’s said it.

At least once.

She’s drifting off when she hears it, and she doesn’t know if it’s her wishful thinking again, her mind, making it up to comfort her. Or if he actually said it, knowing it was safe in the dead of night, out here in the dark forests of an alien moon.

‘I’m in love with you too.’

Whichever it is, it heals her heart. And it doesn’t matter, whether it’s real or not. It sends her to sleep with no dreams of murderous faces, of the past that haunts her, of what’s to come tomorrow, when they race to save their people, yet again. No. Clarke has just a simple dream. A memory. Reality.

Of feeling safe and loved in his arms.

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me crying on [tumblr](http://millipop.tumblr.com) and [either](http://twitter.com/biakebell) of my [twitters](http://twitter.com/beiiamyheart)


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